Colin McEnroe: From Italy, Chris Mattei's Switch Matters Less

I am in Lucca, Italy, which is in northern Tuscany — a poor place in which to contemplate the decision of Chris Mattei to end his campaign for governor and run instead for attorney general.

But I will try.

Lucca should be of interest to our own mad emperor Trumpus Maximus because it offers possibly the Best Use of a Wall Anywhere. Most European city-states got rid of their encircling walls as they expanded outward. Not Lucca.

Lucca has always had walls. Some worked better than others. One of the old walls, for example, did not stop Flavius Odoacer from plundering the city in the fifth century.

Starting in 1545, the Luccans went to work on a high, wide, kick-ass wall. (Note to Trumpus Maximus: it took 105 years to complete.) When completed, the wall stood as a state-of-the-art expression of wealth and military puissance. Except for the part where the rest of the world refused to attack it, ever. Ever! I guess the best wall is the wall you never need, but, still, it might have been frustrating, standing up there, scanning the horizon for a Medici-backed army that never came.

In the 19th century, Lucca gave up, and Duchess Maria Luisa of Bourbon announced that the wall would make a swell pedestrian walkway, so trees were planted up there and today, from dawn well into the night the walls are swarming with joggers, cyclists and dog walkers.

Maria Luisa is but one of many estimable women associated with Lucca.

While here I have learned the story of Matilda of Tuscany who should be more famous and might be an inspiration for Themis Klarides, should she run for governor. From 1076 to her death from gout in 1115, Matilda was a formidable ruler and military commander in central Italy, at one point forcing the German King Henry IV, her sworn enemy, to stand outside her castle barefooted in a blizzard and clad only in a hair shirt, before she would allow him to meet with Pope Gregory VII, her ally and possibly her lover. (People say all kinds of things.)

Anyway, Lucca could not even announce itself as a city-state until Matilda died because it was such a bad idea to make her angry.

This next paragraph has nothing to do with a Klarides candidacy but may have some small connection to Roy Moore. Matilda came into some of her power after her first husband Godfrey the Hunchback was assassinated in Flanders while pooping. (I'm not making any of this up.) Her second marriage was to Welf V, eventual duke of Bavaria. She was in her early 40s. He was maybe 15. Their wedding lasted 120 days. But then, according to one historian Welf would not, you know. After two nights, Matilda arranged to be brought to him, naked, on a table mounted on sawhorses. Still nothing. She denounced him as viler than a worm or rotten seaweed.

I should also mention Elisa Bonaparte, whip-smart sister of Napoleon, who dismissed Lucca as "the dwarf republic." Elisa was Lucca's Ella Grasso, a tough sure-handed administrator with attention to infrastructure, education and the arts. She maybe went a little nuts with urban renewal, tearing down some cool old stuff to build pretty new stuff. When things went south for Napoleon, she was arrested. ("Lock her up!")

My favorite woman of Lucca is Santa Zita. She has been dead for more than 700 years, but she looks great for someone who was never embalmed. She's in a glass case in the church of San Frediano, an Irish monk who was Bishop of Lucca. (See why I love this place?)

Local legends have her sneaking bread out of her master's kitchen but, when she was searched, birds flew out from under her apron. In another version, the authorities snoop in her kitchen while she's on one of those feed-the-poor runs and find angels making the bread, like the birds in Cinderella.

She is also whom you pray to over lost keys. Yesterday, I sat in a little room with her uncorrupted corpse and thought, "In 700 years, it probably won't matter which office Chris Mattei ran for." But this may be a temporary condition of mind.

Colin McEnroe appears from 1 to 2 p.m. weekdays on WNPR-FM (90.5). He can be reached at Colin@wnpr.org.